Cross

I regret to advise that my brain is currently unavailable for blogging. Our technicians are working to resolve the situation by getting inside my head (pictured) and randomly flicking switches in the hope that they’ll hit the right one and service will be restored.

It took half an hour to even upload this far-too-small image, due to iPhoto (or iFighto as my Dad has long called it) deciding that nothing has happened in my life since 2012, which may be a bit true, but still, it’s not my laptop’s place to judge and rather rude for it to say so. I can see all the photos since then but they won’t appear when I search to select them for the blog. If there’s anything more boring than your own computer troubles it’s hearing about someone else’s, so I’ll leave it at that.

So I’m cross at the computer and I’m cross at my brain. I’m cross at my daughter for waking up my son during his nap today, and I’m cross because on the weekend my son fell down a two-metre crevice and got stuck between two houses, scaring the shit out of his father and me. I am cross because until now I have mostly been able to ignore the fact children die in stupid accidents all the time, a stance that seems to be the only way one can parent without wrapping one’s children in tissue paper and locking them in a padded room for their whole childhood. And now I can’t ignore that fact anymore because my little Garnet walking away from this experience unscathed is frankly a bloody miracle, but not one that I trust to happen again. I’m cross because I love these children so much and I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to them.

And I’m a little bit cross at Garnet for liking walking backwards so much, which is how he came to fall down the crevice in the first place. No good can come of walking backwards. I once knew an imaginary dog whose father died walking backwards off a jetty. It’s just not a good idea.

Have you tried turning it in and off again. Brain, not computer. Computer you should throw against wall. Sorry, mine not working either so I deeply sympathize. Garnet, May B, mother and father are all deeply wonderful. Blog when able. Signed A Reader, fixed abode, Melbourne.

It’s not just little children who should be wrapped in tissue paper. Adolescents terrify you with their going-off with friends and their learning to drive. Then young adults want to – aargh – go overseas on their own. Nothing but panic and worry, being a parent.